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For years, Walter Bowen got the credit when his real estate company built a winner.
Case in point: Bowen broke ground for Pearl West, a nine-story office building, in 2014, when most developers were still reeling from the Great Recession. He didn’t have an anchor tenant, but he went ahead anyway, betting Portland’s office market would heat up. Three years later, he sold the building for $87.5 million, or a record $563 per square foot. The Portland Business Journal called him the city’s “behind-the-scenes skyline changer.”
Bowen, 82, drew more praise when he went to work on Block 216, a 35-floor tower with high-end office space and a Ritz-Carlton, Portland’s first-ever five-star hotel. At the groundbreaking, Mayor Ted Wheeler thanked him for a “big vote of confidence” in Portland.
And, in a clear case of living and dying by the sword, it’s Bowen who is taking the heat now as Block 216 teeters. On a March 3 earnings call, Ready Capital, Block 216’s New York-based lender, said foreclosure was probably its best option because the building was struggling to find office tenants and to sell the 132 ultra-posh Ritz-Carlton condominiums on the upper floors. Just a dozen of them have been purchased, according to Ready Capital.
But people familiar with Bowen’s company, BPM Real Estate Group, say one of his lieutenants, Barclay Grayson, deserves much of the early praise—and much of the recent scorn. Grayson handled much of the day-to-day operations at BPM, they say. And it was he, not Bowen, who pushed hardest to build Block 216 with a luxury hotel, one of the people says.
Grayson himself says he was the key man. On his website, barclaygrayson.wordpress.com, he said in 2022 that he “spearheaded work toward the completion of sites such as the luxury downtown tower Block 216.” A month before, he said he “guides development” of that project and others. And in 2021, he wrote that he was “presently focused” on Block 216.
On his LinkedIn profile, Grayson says he’s “responsible for all multi-family, senior housing, office, hotel, self storage and retail acquisitions, financing, divestitures and new development on behalf of the company.”
But reached briefly by phone, Grayson plays down his role at BPM. “I just work for the principal,” he said, before referring WW to the company’s PR firm, which did not offer comment by press deadline.
Bowen has been shedding assets lately, and Grayson is trying to do the same.
Bowen sold his West Hills estate for an undisclosed price late last year after a price cut from $15 million to $10.5 million. He then held what might have been Portland’s poshest garage sale in February, when Bowen unloaded a castle’s worth of furnishings.
Grayson, meantime, recently cut the price on his own three-story, five-bedroom, turreted manse on the shore of Oswego Lake from $7.35 million to $6.94 million, according to Zillow. It has a 600-bottle wine cellar, imported appliances, and a hot tub on the edge of the lake.
Grayson, 55, was an unlikely hire for Bowen. Raised in Dunthorpe and schooled at the exclusive Thacher School in Ojai, Calif., Grayson earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon in 1992, according to his LinkedIn profile, and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1996. Soon after, he became president of Capital Consultants, a firm founded by his father, Jeff, that managed $1 billion in assets, mostly for pension funds.
In 2000, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged father and son with fraud, alleging that the pair had run a “Ponzi-like” scheme at Capital Consultants to hide losses on an investment recommended to their clients. The elder Grayson maintained his innocence until Barclay cut a deal with federal prosecutors and later pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.
After his own plea, Jeff suffered a stroke that left him immobile and ineligible for prison. Barclay served 14 months. He got a second chance when Bowen hired him at BPM in 2003, according to Grayson’s LinkedIn profile.
Bowen hired Grayson out of a sense of duty. Early in his career, Bowen had gotten a loan from Jeff Grayson, according to a person familiar with the matter, and Bowen felt indebted to him. Bowen’s PR firm did not comment by press deadline.
The new job turned out to be lucrative, and soon Grayson, a workaholic according to a person who knows him, was earning large bonuses, court records show. He was also entangled in an acrimonious divorce proceeding with his wife of 20 years, Nicole. The court battle revealed the extent of his earnings, while wedding announcements showed his fondness for the kind of hotel he would seek to open in Portland.
After the record-breaking sale of Pearl West in 2017, Bowen paid Grayson a $4 million bonus, according to divorce court records. Grayson used most of the money to pay cash for a $3.65 million house in Dunthorpe, according to court records. At the time, he drove a BMW with the license plate BESTIA (“beast” in Italian), according to a traffic citation.
At a St. Patrick’s Day boxing match in 2013, he met Katrina Heilman, court records say. In September 2018, Grayson took Heilman to Italy’s Amalfi Coast, where they stayed in the posh Monastero Santa Rosa Hotel & Spa, according to their wedding website, which is still up. After dinner, Grayson surprised her with a “giant” bouquet of roses and got on one knee to propose, according to an account on the wedding site.
Grayson and Heilman married in 2019 at the Allison Inn & Spa in Newberg and bought the house on Oswego Lake in 2021 for $3.85 million. But the union wouldn’t last. Grayson petitioned for divorce in 2022.
“Husband and wife both testified their relationship was volatile, with frequent arguments and mental and physical abuse,” Clackamas County Circuit Judge Robert Herndon wrote in a judgment upholding a prenuptial agreement the couple had signed. Heilman declined to comment.
If Grayson was nervous about downtown real estate late last year, as many developers were, it’s not evident from his actions. On a website that’s still online, Grayson announced plans to marry Shylah Graham, his third wife. To propose, Grayson took Graham to the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. After massages, Grayson surprised Graham with a trail of rose petals and lanterns leading to a balcony with a view of the Pacific.
The suite shows a picture of Grayson holding a bottle of Champagne. Graham holds up her hand to show off a diamond the size of a pistachio.
The good times might have rolled on had Block 216 been the success that Bowen and Grayson imagined. Selling high-end condos and filling a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Portland’s West End was a risk before the pandemic struck, protests over the murder of George Floyd turned into riots, and people smoked decriminalized fentanyl on the streets outside. After all that, a dream financed by Bowen and hustled by Grayson turned into a nightmare (“The Towering Inferno,” WW, March 12).
Now, just as Block 216 struggles, Grayson is selling his house on the shore of Oswego Lake (recently declared by a Clackamas County circuit judge to be open to swimmers who don’t own waterfront property).
“The incredibly private entrance feels as if you’re entering into a French villa with a casual elegance and multiple spaces for respite and entertaining,” the listing for the house says. “The attention to detail that went into the construction and level of finish work in this home is staggering. This is truly one of Oswego Lake’s most unique homes.”
Unique, and up for sale, just like 90% of the condos at the Ritz.